Designing and fabricating three-dimensional scaffolds are essential for tissue engineering. For implantable scaffolds, it is desirable to have internal pores and internal channels connecting the internal pores, so that the cells can migrate into the pores and channels and grow therein, resulting in better compatibility of the scaffolds with their host.
There have been attempts to manually model the micro-architecture within a scaffold by using traditional CAD modeling techniques before committing the models for Rapid Prototyping fabrication. However, there are many limitations of employing traditional CAD techniques for modeling the geometry and micro-architecture of tissue engineering scaffolds. The limitations include: highly labor intensive and lengthy; computational resource intensive; and requirement of skilled CAD personnel because the process is not automated.
Therefore, there is an imperative need to develop methods for designing and fabricating a three-dimensional porous scaffold by eliminating or reducing one or more of the limitations associated with the current methods. This invention satisfies this need by disclosing methods of designing and fabricating a three-dimensional porous scaffold by using bitmap templates. Other advantages of this invention will be apparent with reference to the detailed description.